Welcome to the Concept Mapping Tool
CMT, Concept Mapping Tool, is a project of the
Virginia Tech Entomology
Department.
A concept map is a graphical tool that uses concepts and the
relations between and among them to represent an individual's
cognitive structure (the way the individual thinks). CMT is a
web-based concept mapping tool that can be used to facilitate
instruction, student learning, and collaboration in agricultural
science education. CMT helps students build competencies
for cognitive thinking by allowing them to integrate and synthesize
old and new knowledge across science-related disciplines.
CMT consists of the following components:
- Drawing applet that functions as a concept map assignment
authoring tool and a student concept map construction tool.
- An expert system for grading student concept maps against
an instrurctor's concept map, producing an evaluation report
with hints for the student.
- A web wrapper that allows instructors and students to login
and use the tool. This JavaServer Pages (JSP) site is used
to manage assignments, retain grades and statistics, and
allow instructor review of students' work.
- A beta-level library system for sharing concept maps among
instructors.
Features
- Automatic grading gives students immediate feedback
- Intuitive concept map construction applet
- Web-based learning system
- Library of instructor concept maps
News
- Problem with two applet windows open simultaneously.
Because of the applet design, problems can occur if you have
two browser windows containing the applet open at the the
same time. One concept map may be replaced by the other,
or some of your work may be lost. Posted 4/29/2008.
- Problem with right-click on Macs. Under Mac OS/X
10.3, Command/Click was used like right-click on a PC
to access menus for coloring nodes, etc. It appears that
in some versions of 10.3 and in 10.4 and above, this approach
does not work. One way to deal with this problem is to
use the System Preferences, Mouse pane to configure a secondary
mouse button. The secondary button will work as a right
click in the CMT applet. Posted 2/15/2008.
- Problem with Java 6: The CMT drawing applet does
not work under some releases of Java 6. If you are Java 6
on a Windows machine and have trouble with the applet, try
upgrading your version of Java at
www.java.com. We have confirmed that the applet works
on Windows under Java 6 update 2.
- New Rule-Based Grading System: We are testing a new
rule-based grading system based on the
Jess expert system
shell from Sadnia National Laboratories. Jess is an embeddable
Rete-based rule system written in Java. The Jess version of
the grader is faster and allows for easier manipulation of the
grading rules. See a concept map describing
how the Jess-based grader integrates into CMT.
- The problem resulting from the use of commas in labels has
been corrected.
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Login
Registered users can login with their ID and password or Virginia
Tech PID and PID password.
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